ARRIVAL DW and I (ages 46 & 47 respectively) plus our two kids, ages 10 & 16, flew down to Houston Intercontinental from Minneapolis the morning of our departure on Oct. 14, 2007. The flight arrived at 10:00 am. At baggage claim, a Carnival representative approached us (must have seen our Carnival luggage tags) to see if we were to be on the bus that would go to Galveston. Because of the cost ($40/pp each way) we had made arrangements to get a full size car from Enterprise ($40 total). We took the rental car shuttle bus to the car rental facility, found Enterprise, got our car and were on our way. Because we had forgotten water shoes for our son, we wanted to stop along the way to buy some vs. getting them on the ship. Around exit 30 on I 45 we spotted a Target where they had all sizes. It was a good deal ($5 vs. $20 on the ship). Later on toward Galveston around exit 20 there was more shopping too, Walmarts, Sam's Club, etc. Without the stop, it would have taken about 1 hour, 15 minutes to make the trip. Once in Galveston, we dropped the car off and had to call a cab to get us to the cruise terminal. We knew that the Enterprise office was closed on Sundays and they had a list of taxi company phone numbers to call. We called the first one and in about 10 minutes a van pulled up to take us away. It was about another 25 minutes (Only 3 miles but lots of traffic by the pier)before we were unloading our luggage at the terminal. The taxi ride was $20.

EMBARKATION The taxi driver arranged for a porter to pick up our luggage ($10) and then we got in a very long line. This was about 1:00 pm. Fortunately it was shaded and wasn't terribly hot. The line moved along though and about 1.5 hours later we were on the ship. Once on board, we headed to our rooms (1207 & 1211). Half our luggage was already there. We changed into cooler clothes and headed for the Lido deck. Before we left the room the balance of our luggage arrived. Before that though the cabin steward came by to introduce herself and took our names. For the rest of the trip each time she saw us she greeted each one of us by our first name.

THE ROOM Our rooms were meant to accommodate two people each. There was the option to sleep bunk bed style with a bed dropping down from the ceiling, or use the couch as the other bed. In each room we chose the couch, which by the way, wasn't bad at all. The rooms were plenty big considering that each of us had two pieces of checked luggage plus a carry on or two. Each room had two port holes, which was kind of neat and we were able to watch flying fish the first and last mornings at sea. We brought along an outlet strip, which is a must have if you have more than one thing to plug in at a time. The outlet strip will only plug into the outlet in the room, and not the bathroom. In fact, only things that don't have a polarized plug (such as an electric razor) will plug into the bathroom outlet. Night lights, extension cords, hair dryers, etc. won't plug into the bathroom outlet. There is no clock in the room so we're glad we brought along digital clocks, which we plugged into the outlet strip. There is a hair dryer in a drawer in the room - one of those kinds where you have to sit on a chair to use. It didn't seem like it had a lot of power so we were glad to have brought our own. Our hair dryer would have only plugged into our outlet strip. The ship has Direct TV and the Cartoon Channel, CNN, TBS, etc. and the four network stations out of Denver were available to watch. I have no idea why they chose Denver. The bathroom had plenty of storage shelves. I read about maybe needing to bring along a hanging shoe rack to store things. Don't bother. In the shower there are dispensers for shampoo and liquid soap. They also supply bar soap if you want. Towels are changed twice a day. The only thing that went wrong in the room is that the toilet sometimes wouldn't immediately and completely flush. The maintenance people were there right away though (less than 5 minutes). Apparently since we were up at the front of the boat, in combination with 6 ft to 8 ft swells, the flushing system has to get reset. It must happen often enough as the guy knew immediately what to do. Once the seas calmed down (Tuesday evening) there weren't any problems. But then on Saturday night, it started up when we were in rougher water again. Regarding the rougher seas we encountered, whenever the ship came across a particularly large wave, there would be a loud bang as the result. It sounded like someone in your house slamming the door as hard as they could. There would be smaller bangs like this every couple of minutes and the larger bangs would be every ten minutes or so. We thought at first we heard it so loud because of being so low to the water but we talked with people who were on the Veranda (8th) deck and they could hear it too. One time at lunch there was quite a lurch that even caught the serving staff a little by surprise. The sea settled down once we got around Cuba, just as our steward said it would. Read more